[REL] Changing radio washington to many small stations

[tedhealy]

CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

See http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=109256 for the WIP thread.
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Adds news content to radio washington. Adds BBC station in south pacific. Adds tokyo station. Adds russian music station. Adds many small music stations that change hands throughout the war (you provide this music, sources provided in readme).

538 MB Download.


MultiStation V2......................back up radio.ini

YOU MUST EDIT YOUR OWN RADIO.INI

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THE SHORT VERSION

Install with JSGME.

Edit radio.ini as described in readme.

Add American music to \data\sound\radio\washington, bbc, and usmusic folders. These songs will be played randomly on Allied stations.

Add Japanese music to \data\sound\radio\tokyo and jmusic folders. These songs will be played randomly on Japanese stations.

Add about 20 to 30 American songs to \data\sound\radio\tokyo for propaganda purposes.

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(http://hosted.filefront.com/tedhealy/1934556)

[cdrake66]

Fantastic Ted! Thanks to you my Radio directory has grown to over 5gb lol

Your work has made those long patrols even more enoyable!

Regards,
Chris

[tedhealy]

Unfortunately this mod is on hold and will need to be reworked.

Vindex brought to my attention that when you load a saved game, all the radio content that played previously back to the date your patrol started will play on the radio.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=112744

With testing, this seems to be due to pulling content for different stations from the same folder. This does not happen when you do not pull content for multiple stations from the same folder.

This whole mod is based on pulling content for stations from the same folder.:damn:

You can still use this mod, but when you load a saved game, you are going to hear old audio content all the way back to the date when your patrol started. So for now this mod is on hold.

Some possible fixes I'll be mulling over....Each station will get a separate folder, but this will mean duplicating content and the size of this mod will increase. Cutting down the number of stations. Dropping the whole multiple stations idea and doing a single all around the world Washington, BBC, and Tokyo station.

Right now I'm leaning towards the last option due to my experiences in game. I've found I'd rather sacrifice some realism and just have the radio heard anywhere on the map.

[vindex]

Suggestion:

* Worldwide "Armed Forces Radio Network" that plays the .ogg news files as well as scheduled Mail Call and GI variety shows. Possibly include some other scheduled civilian variety shows, since it appears these were rebroadcast on AFN. (This is all in addition to random music content). Worldwide is plausible, since presumably AFN would be using high-powered shortwave stations to maximize coverage area.

* Tokyo station could be centered somewhere like the Philippines and given a radius that covers the empire. I don't think it's reasonable to make it worldwide and pick up Japanese tunes at Pearl. Content could include scheduled shows like Tokyo Rose since there is no conflict with other stations. Even in the last days of the war, places like Truk were holding out (skipped over in the "island hopping"), and most of China and Southeast Asia was still under Japanese control, so it makes sense you'd still hear some Japanese radio in the South Pacific and South China Sea.

* BBC should be centered somewhere like Java and given a radius covering most of southeast Asia and Australia. Even after Singapore falls, you have to figure you'd get the India-based stations around that area. Again, I don't like the idea of picking up the BBC at Pearl, or as far north as Japan. For content, I've put all my BBC news reports into this folder as "events," unless they were so important they would have been rebroadcast on AFN.

* I've added a Shanghai station playing Chinese opera and popular tunes. Limited coverage radius to East China Sea and South China Sea.

* Radio Saigon should be fine as is. Let the Frenchies be.

* Could add civilian stations (NBC/CBS/Mutual) in US or Hawaii, with range limited by the date line. No .ogg files, since that would conflict with AFN. But you could have non-conflicting scheduled news and variety shows as "events", as long as your harddrive could accomodate the required space. But just the random music alone will take up substantial space if you need a separate folder for each station.

* Russian radio tunes from Vladivostok?

The intention is to avoid the "folder sharing" problems while still providing some location-specific flavor as you float around the map.

[tedhealy]

Suggestion:

* Worldwide "Armed Forces Radio Network" that plays the .ogg news files as well as scheduled Mail Call and GI variety shows. Possibly include some other scheduled civilian variety shows, since it appears these were rebroadcast on AFN. (This is all in addition to random music content). Worldwide is plausible, since presumably AFN would be using high-powered shortwave stations to maximize coverage area.

Mail Call/GI journal and variety shows are covered by my other mod(s). I'm sticking to news and only news for this mod.



* Tokyo station could be centered somewhere like the Philippines and given a radius that covers the empire. I don't think it's reasonable to make it worldwide and pick up Japanese tunes at Pearl. Content could include scheduled shows like Tokyo Rose since there is no conflict with other stations. Even in the last days of the war, places like Truk were holding out (skipped over in the "island hopping"), and most of China and Southeast Asia was still under Japanese control, so it makes sense you'd still hear some Japanese radio in the South Pacific and South China Sea.

Good suggestions. Definitely radio Tokyo will have about the same coverage or greater as it has now. It will probably become a single station cutting out the smaller stations....although those smaller stations could be used to just play Japanese music without any Tokyo Rose audio.


* BBC should be centered somewhere like Java and given a radius covering most of southeast Asia and Australia. Even after Singapore falls, you have to figure you'd get the India-based stations around that area. Again, I don't like the idea of picking up the BBC at Pearl, or as far north as Japan. For content, I've put all my BBC news reports into this folder as "events," unless they were so important they would have been rebroadcast on AFN.

I agree. BBC and Washington will definitely be separate. BBC radio will mostly cover Australia and the South Pacific.


* Could add civilian stations (NBC/CBS/Mutual) in US or Hawaii, with range limited by the date line. No .ogg files, since that would conflict with AFN. But you could have non-conflicting scheduled news and variety shows as "events", as long as your harddrive could accomodate the required space. But just the random music alone will take up substantial space if you need a separate folder for each station.


See my other mod - radio stations devoted to one show. I already have quite a few old time radio shows released. They will stay separate from the news.


* Russian radio tunes from Vladivostok?

If someone has a source for Russian tunes from pre 1940's, sure.


I've alrady rescripted the washington station up until 1943. Bascially I've combined the washington and new york folder, added some more audio here and there, and added some radio text messages to go along with the audio.

My plan would be for radio washington to be heard everywhere. BBC radio would be about as you described it as would radio Tokyo. What I might do is keep some of the smaller stations just as random music stations. The problems of sharing content from the same folder shouldn't cause any issues for random music stations. That way, the overall idea of having stations come and go as the war advances is kept.

[vindex]

For Soviet songs, you may want to check out this site:

http://www.sovmusic.ru/english/index.php

Not all are pre-1945, but a good selection seem to be.

[Hylander_1314]

Well, I have tried to download your work, but no matter what I use, IE 7, or Firefox, I get CRC Failure issue, with 5 files being listed, and Firefox listed 3 as being bad. I have Comcast cable for internet service, which comes with McAfee as a bundled package, so Windows default stuff is disabled, but to date, the only radio mod that I've been able to download successfully is the Radio Honolulu mod, and Captain Midnight's CBS Radio mod. All the others give me CRC Failure errors. Any suggestions are appreciated. This is getting frustrating, as even with DSL, it takes 10+ minutes to download the file(s).

Thanks in advance.

[tedhealy]

Well, I have tried to download your work, but no matter what I use, IE 7, or Firefox, I get CRC Failure issue, with 5 files being listed, and Firefox listed 3 as being bad. I have Comcast cable for internet service, which comes with McAfee as a bundled package, so Windows default stuff is disabled, but to date, the only radio mod that I've been able to download successfully is the Radio Honolulu mod, and Captain Midnight's CBS Radio mod. All the others give me CRC Failure errors. Any suggestions are appreciated. This is getting frustrating, as even with DSL, it takes 10+ minutes to download the file(s).

Thanks in advance.
Don't download this one now. In fact, I'll remove it from filefront. It's getting reworked. It will be back up by the end of the week.

The file size is going to be large. I can't really help that. There are 150+ audio files ranging from under a minute to 30 minutes long.

I don't know what to tell you about your errors. After I upload, I always test download to make sure they work and I haven't had a problem. I'll test some of the other radio station mods to make sure they download fine.

EDIT: I downloaded Whistler_station.rar, a 300+ MB file and it extracted fine. Do you have a specific file you are having problems with I can test?

[tedhealy]

For Soviet songs, you may want to check out this site:

http://www.sovmusic.ru/english/index.php

Not all are pre-1945, but a good selection seem to be.

Excellent:up:

I think I'm going to go with this plan

Washington heard everywhere - scripted news and random music
BBC heard in the south pacific - scripted BBC news and random music
Tokyo heard up to about the date line and south to around Australia - some scripted Tokyo Rose files and random Japanese and some American music

The smaller stations will become random music only. I'll also add a short range Russian music station I think.

I'll have to do some more testing to make sure this will work and the saved game issue isn't still an issue.

[tedhealy]

It looks like the saved game issue can't be resolved. When you load a saved game, the scripted news audio events back to when you first started the patrol will play. Whether they are .ogg files, mp3 files, they have text, or don't have text. Unless there's somethiing in the saved game file that could be changed or some way to change how the events get played, we'll just have to live with it.

This mod needed to be tightened up a bit anyways so I'm going to continue editing it.

[Fearless]

It may well have to do with the mission start date. When you look at the "save game" screen, the game date shown on the top left does not change at all even if you're a month ahead. The date shown is when you depart on your first mission.

[vindex]

This is a link to several very interesting articles about WWII radio stations in the Pacific War: http://radiodx.com/spdxr/rhc_military_broadc.htm

I was surprised to learn several things:

* Shanghai was a very important radio center. The Japanese operated the English-language XMHA, which identified itself as "The Voice of the Orient" and could be heard in New Zealand. There was also a German (!) radio station run out of the foreign concession called XGRS ("German Radio Station"), which broadcast virulent anti-British propaganda and news from Germany throughout the war. The Italians also had one called XIRS.

* The Australians operated RAAF Radio, "The Voice of the Islands", from a jungle location in Papau New Guinea. It began broadcasting in late 1943, and focused on music, light entertainment, and sports.

* On February 24, 1944, Gen. MacArthur opened a radio station based in Port Morseby called 9PA. It was taken over by the Australians later in the war.

* The main Japanese station was NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai) which operated shortwave stations capable of reaching the US West Coast and Canada. So it is not unreasonable to set range at 100,000 (worldwide coverage).

* The Japanese did not actively broadcast propaganda in the early part of the war, since they figured they were winning and such methods were beneath them. NHK's propaganda programs only began in earnest in 1943. Hence our inability to find earlier programs on the Web. Besides the Zero Hour broadcasts, they also rebroadcast local US news reports on disasters, fires, crimes, etc. This REAL disheartening news was more effective in undermining morale than any silly overt propaganda messages. ("The Japanese had learned that propaganda based on truth is more effective than any propaganda based on lies")

* Japanese-run MTCY Manchuria was a particularly strong Japanese station that could be heard as far as Australia and New Zealand.

* Japanese-run XGAP Peking could be hear (weakly) in New Zealand.

* There was a small station in Hong Kong called JTHK (Japanese Territory of Hong Kong) but with limited range. In May 1942 it changed its callsign to JQHA.

* "Radio Saigon" remained under French management (with Japanese oversight) until March 10, 1945, when the Japanese took it over directly. Under the French, it played mainly locally produced programming and was well known for its POW broadcasts (identifying POWs and sometimes relaying simple messages from them). It could often be heard as far as Australia and New Zealand, where the POW broadcasts generated much interest.

* The Dutch operated a station playing Dutch content from Batavia until March 7, 1942, when they signed off with this statement in English: "This is Radio Bandoeng closing down. God save the Queen. Goodbye everyone until better times come." The Japanese restarted the station on March 18, and it was their most powerful broadcast station (even more than Tokyo) during the war. It used various call signs: ABC (mimicking Australia Broadcasting Company), JBC, and "Radio Batavia" and signed off with the American "Liberty Bell" march. Its last broadcast was July 26, 1945.

* There were six shortwave stations in the Philippines at the start of the war, and during the early days they relayed war news from US stations. Although the Japanese took over these stations, most went off the air in 1942 due to a lack of spare parts. US forces on the Bataan Peninsula briefly broadcast "Radio Freedom" until they surrendered.

* The Japanese broadcast from Singapore under the name "Shonan Radio" from March 28, 1942 to February 3, 1945, but the range was fairly limited.

* Radio Bangkok / Radio Siam was run by the Japanese and was powerful enough to be heard in Australia.

[vindex]

There appear to be some interesting WWII audio clips on this site:

http://www.umkc.edu/lib/spec-col/ww2/main-txt.htm

I'm sure there is a great deal of overlap with what has already been posted, but it looked like some new material as well.

All are in .ram format. I've been curious, will SH4 play .ram and other file formats or just .mp3?

[Hylander_1314]

Don't download this one now. In fact, I'll remove it from filefront. It's getting reworked. It will be back up by the end of the week.

The file size is going to be large. I can't really help that. There are 150+ audio files ranging from under a minute to 30 minutes long.

I don't know what to tell you about your errors. After I upload, I always test download to make sure they work and I haven't had a problem. I'll test some of the other radio station mods to make sure they download fine.

EDIT: I downloaded Whistler_station.rar, a 300+ MB file and it extracted fine. Do you have a specific file you are having problems with I can test?[/quote]

I'm going to give it another go when you get the new one up on the site. I had problems with them all. Radio Hollywood, Whistler, and the big one.

I had just found my registry mechanic disk, and had a bunch of errors that had to be repaired, so that may have been a factor. I run Comcast DSL so it doesn't take too long to download the files. About 6 to 7 minutes max. I also defragged my C drive even though it showed that it didn't need it, and only a few maybe 500 things were out of sych. I keep all the main programs on this drive, and games and art programs on D drive. So D drive gets more abuse than the former.

Thanks for the feedback though!

[vindex]

I went looking for German songs and propaganda broadcasts for my German Shanghai station ... and found a real gem:

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/03/charlie_and_his.html
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/12/still_more_nazi.html

These are genuine recordings of a Nazi band that played propaganda-filled spoofs of popular swing tunes. Swing music was prohibited in German as degenerate music, but they figured it'd be useful to reach the listening ears of enemy troops. The songs are in English and absolutely HILARIOUS, at least in retrospect, kind of a Nazi version of Weird Al Yankovic.

[tedhealy]

There appear to be some interesting WWII audio clips on this site:

http://www.umkc.edu/lib/spec-col/ww2/main-txt.htm

I'm sure there is a great deal of overlap with what has already been posted, but it looked like some new material as well.

All are in .ram format. I've been curious, will SH4 play .ram and other file formats or just .mp3?
SH4 will only play ogg, wav, and mp3 that I'm aware of.

For more audio material

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=107195

also zootradio.com, otr.net, and archive.org.

[tedhealy]

Version 2 is done more or less. I need to do some basic tests to make sure stations work, check their range, check to make sure a sample of the events are correctly playing, and then look over the text files.

With the Russian music station added (49 songs at 130 MB), this mod is 560 MB.

There is the washington station heard everywhere that plays scripted news and random music. There is the BBC station heard in the south pacific that only plays BBC scripted news and random music. There is a tokyo station heard to around the area covered at the height of the empire in 1942 that plays a handful of tokyo rose clips after mid 1944 and random music. There also is a russian station that reaches just beyond the sea of okhotsk that plays random russian music.

All of the smaller stations are now random music stations and pull content randomly from one of two folders depending on whether it's a japanese or allied station.

Also, about 1/3 of the washington events now produce a text event for the log. They are messages from your radio man about current events that can be heard on the radio.

Other than the russian music, I'm not packing any music with this mod. You'll have to get the 2 japanese music packs and american music from other sources (I'll list the links for music in the readme again) .

Known issues - the saved game issue of repeated broadcasts. Also sometimes a song will play either really slowly or really fast on a radio station. After the song is finished the problem goes away and songs play normally. I have no idea what causes either of these issues or how to fix them as of now.

This should be ready to download in a day or two.

[tedhealy]

Version 2 is uploaded. See the first post for link. Make sure to download the readme with it.

[XanderF]

Question on the 'smaller radio stations that play random music'...

...if I'm in an area with 2 smaller stations drawing from the same folder, and I switch stations between the two...will they both have the same song playing "at the same time"? Or, as it's "random", will they change the song each time I change station? Or does each station draw its own 'playlist' (for lack of a better concept) from the same folder, but the order is completely unique?

[tedhealy]

Question on the 'smaller radio stations that play random music'...

...if I'm in an area with 2 smaller stations drawing from the same folder, and I switch stations between the two...will they both have the same song playing "at the same time"? Or, as it's "random", will they change the song each time I change station? Or does each station draw its own 'playlist' (for lack of a better concept) from the same folder, but the order is completely unique?

Each station should play the random music randomly and independent of other stations.

[tedhealy]

So far I've found one file that doesn't work. The fall of Corregidor .wav file doesn't seem to play. It's just a short 20 some second file that also produces some text for your log about the fall of Corregidor. Not a huge deal, but if I can get it to work, I'll upload a patch to fix it. I'm thinking it's because it's a wav file, specifically it's a wav file that refuses to be converted to an mp3 file for some reason.

EDIT: I think I fixed it. I'll upload a patch that also will have an additional Japanese radio scripted broadcast.

[bruschi sauro]

TKS MATE:know:
well done job.
CHI FA DA SE FA PER TRE.:smug:

[tedhealy]

I uploaded an update to fix the non playing file in march of 1942. I also added one radio tokyo file announcing the surrender of Singapore in feb 1942 (japanese language audio). If anyone has any sources for japanese language audio, please share as radio tokyo is terribly inadequate as it is.

Install with JSGME or just drop the files in the correct folder from \data\sound\radio.

http://hosted.filefront.com/tedhealy/1934556

[tdean001]

Thanks, Ted. This mod is absolutely brilliant.


tom

[tedhealy]

Everyone needs to grab this update. October 1942, radio washington may cause a CTD due to the wrong file being named in the events.ini. Sometimes it crashes, sometimes it doesn't on the 12th, but the file will never play for that date. Grab the update.

This update also includes the previous one. Install with JSGME or manually put the files in correct folders and click yes when it asks to overwrite.

http://files.filefront.com/05_25_UPDATEMultiRadioStanrar/;7607625;/fileinfo.html

If you already downloaded the previous update and want to fix this error by hand, go to \data\sound\radio\washington\events and open the events.ini in notepad. Go to the October the 12th, 1942 entry and change it to

[EVENT]
StartDate=12.10.1942
StartTime=17.00.00
MediaFile=1942-10-12-spe_1942_1012_roosevelt.mp3

The MediaFile= line was incorrect.